When It Raines It Pours
by Celesteomallard
Summary: It was loathing at first sight. Everything they ever believed conflicted, other than, ofcourse, their mutual greed and disregard for anyone's rules but the ones they wrote. When opportunity presented itself to be rid of her once and for all as well as achieve his ultimate goal of destroying Sonic Underground, he sank his teeth into it. The only drawback was the unexpected regret...


It was raining. He could remember a time in his life when rain had, at worst been an annoyance, something to cover the tracks or scents of quarry on the run. But more often than not, he had liked the rain. It suited his personality well, clearing the streets as people ducked in doors, blotting out the overly cheerful sun with encompassing dark clouds. Rain washed away the old. Washed away evidence of past crimes. Drown out the chatter of the multitudes with its rhythmic patter, or washed away whole villages with flash floods, leaving them ripe for plunder.

Yes, he had liked rain, once. Back when it only had one meaning. Back before...

He threw a book at the window where the rivulets streamed down from the sky across the panel, not hard enough to break the glass, but hard enough to make the shutters swing shut and block out the sight of the downpour. In truth, he had half hoped it would break. Breaking things meant the cost of replacing them, but occasionally, it was therapeutic to his foul mood, and he was in a particularly foul mood today, not even acknowledging the anxious way his partner hovered behind him in the kitchen doorway.

Dingo shifted from one of offish foot to the other, then placed a chipped China cup with strong black coffee on the table in front of the wolf, who didn't spare it a glance, despite the way it clattered against its saucer and almost threaten to spill its steaming contents into his lap.

More silence. Occasionally, one gray ear flicked, armored fingers drummed the table top, but the air remained dense and heavy with unspoken animosity. Finally, Dingo, who had never been one with the strongest of nerves (for all his size and strength, he was known to run from as insignificant a a threat as a spider) could stand it no more and found himself blurting out, a bit eagerly, "Maybe if we went back to the sapphire mines, she left ya another messege.."

Sleet's gauntleted fist struck the table so hard it not only shook, a crack split open in it all the way through the grain of the wood out to the edge. The coffee splattered on the floor as the cup and saucer took abrupt flight and made a shattering decent. Dingo jumped a good foot in the air and back as his partner whirled on him,standing so abruptly his chair fell on its side with a violent THWACK. "Don't you understand, don't you comprehend the simplest most basic fact, you moron, you complete imbecile, you brainless wonder! She's _**gone**_ , she's rotting in a ditch somewhere or buried in a mass grave out in the wastelands with the rest of the Resistance who caught the virus, and there's no point in talking about it anymore!"

"Yeah but Sleet, I just thought maybe, ya know..." The big Aussie fidgeted, wilting under the leanner, more intimidating canine's venomous yellow glare.

"You just thought, you just _thought_ ," Sleet gritted out mockingly in almost a sing songs manner, his fists clenched at his sides, shoving his muzzle in the meek brutes face,"that's the problem, Dingo. You don't **THINK**. I do the thinking, remember?! Because on your best day, the brightest, most ingenious thought you ever manage to summon up is beyond _idiotic_! "

"That's not fair, Sleet, I'm just trying to help.." Dingo whined, then winced when Sleet grabbed him roughly by one orange ear and jerked him down to eye level.

"Did I ask for your help? No, because I neither want or need it, as if you were capable of helping **ANYONE**. You can barely take care of yourself , you lack the simplest, most basic common sense," the wolf replied coldly, giving the captive ear a cruel twist and not releasing it until he earned a complaint whimper of submition. " I don't need your help, Dingo. I need you to keep your mouth shut. It's over, do you understand? I sent the stupid girl away and she's dead now. That's the end of it."

He stalked away, furious as he slammed the door to his room behind him. Although, if he was honest with himself_ and Sleet was very rarely honest with anyone, himself included_ he would have been forced to admit he wasn't sure whom he was more angry at: Dingo, for suggesting they come back to this hovel in hopes she might return here as it was the last place they'd all been together, the girl for her relentless stupidity and for lingering in his mind after he'd tried so hard to push her away, to forget, or himself most of all, for letting anyone get close enough to him that they had put even the tiniest chink in his solid armor of indifference and disdain.

Sitting on the broken down bed, he absently rubbed the back of his neck, the scruff just behind the ears and memories came back unbidden...NO. Dammit all to Choas! Why did he care?! He didn't care about anyone but himself his own personal gain, and what was there to gain in any of this? Why was he feeling so...what was the word...?

~ _Guilty_?~ a treacherous little voice in the back of his mind whispered, sounding smug.

"Shut up," he snarled to the empty, dark room. That irksome little whisper had become a most and more frequent pest, plaguing him most often when he was alone...he couldn't seem to banish it no matter how hard he tried. Occasionally, he wondered if the stress of being Robotniks hired hand had invoked the early stages of schizophrenia, or even a minor split personality. Anything was better than the lat possibility, that he was, he shuddered at the thought, suffering from the resurgence of a conscience! No, perish the thought. He was not so weak as that. Still...he felt..something he was hesitant to put any name to. Each one the voice suggested was worse than that before it.

 _~Its remorse. You feel it because it is your fault. You told her to go, to never come back. You thought she would make you weak, and you sent her away. Away to die...~_

"I didn't force her to return to the Resistance," he snapped defensively, wondering why he was getting defensive. He hadn't done anything wrong. It was the smartest thing he could have done, the only thing. "She knew it was a lost cause, she said so herself and if she went back to them, it's no fault of mine!"

~ _Except you helped him recover the virus. The virus he planted in the spy drone. The virus to kill them all, including her...~_

He buried his face in his hands, dug his fists into his ears trying to shut it out. It had seemed so simple, so logical at the time. Biological warfare was one front they had never tried to destroy those wretched hedgehogs and their traitorous supporters. When he and Dingo had been collecting taxes from that fool scientist and discovered the first stage of what would become known to the commoners as The Reaper sealed up in an inconspicuous test tube, never in his wildest dreams had he imaged how powerful a weapon it would evolve into...

Sleet had always been an opportunist, taking anything he could that might benefit him, or his employer. And himself in the process. It was his nature, ingrained in him every bit as strongly as his species' unexplainable enthrall with the moon. Could he truly be faulted for following his nature?

He lay back on the lumpy pillow,lacing his fingers on his chest over his heart, determined to put it out of his mind. The trickle down result of Dr. Robotnik's success with extorting the nobles in exchange for the vaccination against the virus had left him wealthy, not enough to ever quench his thirst for more, but enough to focus on for the time being, mentally calculating his recent asset increase until he drifted into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed of strange , mismatched eyes, one green fading into gold, the other blue mixed with green, both looking up at him, refusing to shed a tear, daring him to speak the truth.

The birds woke him. He knew it was morning, despite the prevailing darkness, because the damn birds were already singing outside his wind, Chaos take them. The window was lodged three quarters of the way down and there as no way to shut out that hellacious warbling, Ben when he seized the lumpy pillow and crammed it over his head. At leas the rain had stopped.

The air was still, moist, and left him with he uneasy feeling he was trapped in some sort of limbo between darkness and dawn. He lay there a while longer, waiting for the blackness to a bait and the light to spill in, affirming the morning. Waiting for the damn birds to shut up, wishing he could find and throttle each and every one of them until their tiny black eyes bulged out.

Finally he rolled out of bed. He me Dingo would return to the castle today, to do their masters bidding and put this all behind them. To crush what remained of the Resistance. There was nothing for them here.

"Dingo!" He snapped loudly as he stoked into the living room , heedless of if his cohort was still asleep in this early hour. No response. He kicked the secondary bedroom door so hard it swung open on its untrustworthy rusted hinges to reveal...an empty bed. It was unmade but the sheets were cold to the touch and it hadn't been used in several hours.

"Dingo, you muffin brain, where are you?" He whirled, his cape snapping behind him as he entered the kitchen."We're leaving..." That was when he saw the scrap of paper held to the refrigerator with a smiley face magnet. It bore Dingo's childish scrawl in what appeared to be green crayon.

Sleet seized the note and ripped it off the fridge, reading it, then again, more slowly in disbelief, his jaw almost going slack:

 **Hey Slet,**

 **Gon to find Rane. Be bak soone. Don't worree**

 **-Dingo**

Absently, decoding all the misspelling, he felt the urge to take a crack at the fact the muscle bound moron had been able to spell his own name correctly, when he hadn't that of his partner of multiple years. But then the anger set in and he crushed the note in his fist. "Dingo, you..." He couldn't seem to come up with a single insult that was foul enough, not even one curse fir the profound its of the stupidity...

 _~Aren't you worried? He's going to ground zero, where The Reaper first took hold. If the vaccine doesn't work...~_

"Good riddance!" He threw the note across the room."He was always getting in my way, I'm better off alone. It would serve him right, being so dense, to end up dying with those stupid rebels. I'd be happy to dance on his grave the big dumb..the big...ARGH!" He stormed out and slammed the door behind him, not caring if it latched or not. One way or another, he was never coming back here.

He checked the power gage to make sure it was at full charge on his hover cycle the swung one leg over it, kick starting it to life with a backfire no roar as the engine flared to life and he stood on the power pad, excellerating to full speed in less than a moment. Over the rush of wind past his ears, he muttered to himself, "If he's _not_ already dead, he'll _wish_ he were **_when I find him_**!"

 **Authors Note and Disclaimer: In regards to any confusion as to this fiction starting well into the course of the plot, this is a stand alone story that got stuck in my head. Can't get it out till I write it. I know my understanding of the Sonic universe is far inferior to most, and this a tough crowd to please. Taking that in mind, and after some advice from two friends, one new (Deliverer, and I highly recommend you read her Sonic series and anything written by her, as she excels with weaving a believable and most enjoyable tale worthy of publishing and her stories are far, far better than mine and use very few OCs. I am particularly partial to her pairing of Sleet and Queen Aleena, but as you can tell, as a fan girl and a villain addic, I am biased) one old , who warned me I will most likely get my tail scalded for posting anything in this fandom.**

 **But if I get one single good review, despite my premise hinging on a mind child who will not doubt be written off as a Mary Sue (seriously, can't we get past that term? Bella Swan is a Mary Sue, Rey of Star Wars is a Mary Sue, Katniss Everdean is a Mary Sue, Daenerys Targarye...need I continue...they all garner their share of love. I'm not asking you to like Raine, or her brothers, but if you've gotten this far, all I ask is you give me a chance to write you a read worthy bit of entertainment, before you flay me alive and turn me into a virtual copy of the Boltons sigil...Game of Throne fans, you get the joke.**

 **I apologize in advance for any mistakes I may make in characterization, timeline, technology, etc. and will be happy to try and correct anything pointed out to me. I also apologize to anyone if my story seems similar in any aspect to something someone has already written. I haven't read a great deal of the available fiction on the site, and I'm simply going with the story that popped into my head, I mean no offense.**

 **Disclaimer, I don't own Sonic or any of the associated characters from Sonic Underground, such as Sleet, Dingo, Maniac, Sonia, and so on...if I DID the show would have at least gotten a decent ending with the prophecy being fulfilled instead of leaving us hanging just as they were starting to come close to reuniting with their mother! The shame of it all! Also, as I've recently stated to Deliverer (read her fics , I command you!) If I were to have any say in the cannon itself, instead of new villains and heroes constantly being introduced in the games, we'd be seeing some familiar faces reused far more frequently**.


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